I Am an Executioner

by Rajesh Parameswaran

  How could the glasses have gotten there? I wondered. My mind raced through all I did: a pleasurable reminiscence. Even with the teenage wildness of it all, the transfer of the reading glasses was difficult to explain. I considered that Jogesh had seen me many times wearing them, and was likely to have recognized them.

  “Listen, Bibhuti. Was he behaving differently to you on the film set? Does he suspect something?”

  “Not in the least. He has been perfectly normal, perfectly cool,” I said, feeling a chill.

  “Same in the home. He is absolutely impossible to flap. I don’t understand it.”

  “How self-absorbed he is! What better proof of his vanity could there be? Anyway, let us not allow it to worry us. I am on page ninety-five already. Love triangle is being resolved.”

  “Sorry, Bibhuti. I can’t think of your screenplay. I am upset.”

  “There is no need for upset, Nirmala. Whether he knows or doesn’t know, who cares? Relax and feel happy. My film is the new beginning for us.”

  Walking down Fifth Avenue, in the bright sun and cool wind of New York, I feel it still: A new film, a new beginning. I remember a very similar feeling, in 1974, on Calcutta Nights.

  We will make films about the people and the soil of Bengal, Jogesh said. It was a sort of manifesto. We will write stories about our own land, and in the particular, we will reveal the universal. After he became famous, in interviews with foreign magazines, he would say, in response to the inevitable questions about why he didn’t use his fame to direct movies for a more lucrative foreign market: “I subscribe to Satyajit Ray’s philosophy. Why would I make films about a culture I don’t know? What would I have to say about it? On a practical level, how would I direct actors in a language that I did not grow up speaking?”

  And so, for our first film, we found ourselves in a small village in the countryside, a dozen of farmers and children crowding us, eager to help. Anant had been hired because of his facility with a Leica, but what did he know about the 35mm motion picture camera we had managed to cadge from a commercial film studio only three days previously? Absolutely nothing, and as a consequence, the first five days’ footage was underexposed and completely useless.

  These were the sorts of problems we struggled with. Jogesh’s father-in-law turned out to be a cautious man, so while our funds were sufficient to make a film, they were far from enough to import an experienced crew. Our soundman George, a transplant from Kerala, fancied himself a musician, composing melodramatic disco ballads of love in the style of the southern filmi musicians of the time. We hired him as soundman because he had access to some excellent microphones and mixing equipment. (Like my wife, he also chided Jogesh for putting only one full song in the film.) George took the job only because he thought it a stepping-stone to becoming a playback singer, and we did not disabuse him.

  In this context, my own inefficiencies were relatively minor: showing up late and worse for the previous night’s wear. But I was smart and skillful, and Jogesh and I needed to spend very little time in communicating. I knew his tastes and dislikes implicitly; he trusted my choices. I was the one he turned to, who had been there since he had voiced his first dreams of filmmaking, who understood his vision.

  We had to cadge a shot of a pond on a particular farmer’s land. The one stingy farmer in the whole village, he wouldn’t let us approach it unless we paid him.

  “Jogesh, I will knock on the front door and feign an epileptic fit, eh?” I told him. “This will draw the entire household to the front. Meanwhile, you and Anant carry the camera by hand and steal the shot.”

  When he realized I wasn’t joking, he laughed and clapped me on the shoulder. “Now you are talking, my friend!” I did it shamelessly, vibrating on the ground and loudly gagging, drooling on my cheeks, eyes rolling up, for fully twelve, fifteen minutes! Which actor could have pulled it off better? Like that, we made it happen.

  And every evening in the village dhaba, Jogesh and I would plan the next day’s shooting. He would have one cup of the local brew and take his leave, telling, “My friend, enjoy yourself, but I need you sharply by six o’clock a.m. tomorrow. I cannot make this film without your eye.”

  Finally it was my eye, my masterful and instinctive eye for visual detail—(How could I pick which rock was precisely the rock our hero should pluck from the path, and fling—shockingly—at his brother? It was moss-covered and dangerously angular, to be lifted with both hands. Simply I knew. How should I know which color to paint the walls of the home, so the figures would stand out distinctly in the wedding party scene? Not white! [Too bright.] But umber. Again, I just knew)—which gave the film the naturalism, the simple beauty, for which it was rightly lauded.

  And lauded it was. Because, for all our inexperience, for all our foibles, we pulled off something rare. My God, everyone from the little village boy who happily ran our errands, and fell asleep one morning in the branches of a pipal tree, providing one of the film’s memorable shots; to Anant’s resourcefully tracking the camera on a bullock cart, with three farmers pulling—somehow, shot by shot, we made it, and it was a thing of great beauty. There was never another feeling like that first film, the joyful camaraderie and satisfaction of a job well done, the sense that we were inventing something new in our own lives while showing something new to India and the world.

  I cannot sufficiently emphasize, it would have been a signal achievement even if it did not earn overwhelming domestic success, even if it did not win eleven festival gold medals, all of which it did, and our lives were never the same.

  One was too happy to feel bad for Nirmala those days. She visited the set two, three different times, always with the same distant look in her eyes. Nothing could awe or impress her, and even when the film exploded, one sensed she might have been happier as the quietly wealthy wife of an advertising executive, rather than the publicly wealthy wife of an internationally famous artist, because she had no part in it; it took place entirely out of her ken, even as she had enabled it. And perhaps even then she perceived—so rightly—that it would only succeed in taking Jogesh further away from her.

  7

  When the morning of my meeting finally comes, it arrives with a feeling of turbo-nauseau, and a dry, anxious burning for a cigarette almost from the instant I awake, even before my morning coffee. I smoke two of them greedily, sitting on the commode top in the bathroom with the fan on, in blatant violation of the room’s little cardboard warnings. After flushing them, I spray the room with my cologne, but the cigarette smell does not perfectly disappear. At that point, I think better than to order breakfast, for fear these healthy American room service waiters will smell the lingering smoke and cause me trouble on my most important day. I can postpone coffee until my breakfast meeting, regardless.

  I take the taxi to Mr. Jefferson’s hotel, arriving there some twenty minutes early. The draperies in the lobby are very thick and cream-colored, compared with my own hotel, and the sofas more velvety, and the black marble of the floor feels somehow butter-soft beneath my shoes. I am glad I am wearing my new suit; otherwise this hotel might have intimidated me. I find the restaurant and give my warm coat to a gentleman, and then a beautiful lady with big brown eyes and a tiny nose listens to me without smiling.

  “You can wait for Mr. Bundy at the bar, if you’d like,” she says.

  “What can I get you, sir?” the bartender asks me.

  “I shall order when Mr. Jefferson Bundy arrives,” I tell him, forbearingly.

  Forty minutes later, my head is about to crack for the lack of coffee. Busy Mr. Jefferson Bundy is running late indeed. I am about to put my manners aside and order the damned cup of coffee, when a high voice beckons me.

  “Bibhuti.”

  “Yes?” I swivel in the stool and don’t see him at first. Then I look down toward my feet. There is the littlest man I have ever seen in my life—and I am speaking to you as a small individual myself, but one who falls within the normal range.

  “Mr. Jeffers
on Bundy?”

  “Jeff,” he replies up to me.

  My heart starts pounding and my arms to tingle. It really is him. “Hello!” I jump from my stool, stumbling but catching myself, and extend down my suddenly quivering hand. “Hello, Mr. Jefferson Bundy!”

  “It’s Jeff,” he only says more quickly, reaching my hand, then drawing me toward his table. It is hard to tell his age—perhaps thirty or younger—or is this an impression caused by his height?

  “As for the screenplay,” he says immediately, when we have sat down, “we really like what we see.”

  “Bhalo,” I say, but I am not thinking. The buttons on his blazer are too shiny, causing my eyeballs to ache.

  “It’s gotta feel good to hear that, right?”

  “Bhalo. Bhalo. Good.”

  I am aware that my upper lip is sweating. I lick off the salty drops. What does one do with one’s hands at the breakfast table? I am asking myself. For suddenly I have forgotten. I fold them on the table, one over the other, but this looks lumpy and odd. I move them to my lap, but feel even stiffer. I take the sweating glass of water in one hand; the jangling tinkles of ice expose my nervous tremors—I am splashing water on the tablecloth—so I put it down again. With a wave of panic, I see that suddenly before Jefferson Bundy’s eyes, despite my fashionable clothes, I am an old and frail and nervous man.

  “We can talk about adding American characters. We can bring on writers to do that.”

  I try to consider this. Is this good or bad? My stomach is clenched and my head is cloudy, and I am quite sure I should have ordered the room service coffee come what may. Also my bowels are telling me that my morning cigarettes were a poor idea.

  Suddenly, I remember something I have meant to say. “I printed a cleaner copy!” I inform Jefferson Bundy. Ever since reading Jogesh’s new screenplay, printed in the hotel business lounge, I have been consumed with the onion-thin Indian paper I mailed Mr. Bundy.

  Out from nowhere, a man in black passes by. “Coffee!” I cry, lunging my arm at him. Then I turn to Mr. Bundy, mortified at my sudden shout. “You also?” I ask meekly.

  “He’s not the waiter, he’s the busboy,” Jefferson Bundy calmly informs me.

  “Oh.”

  “What is really holding us back,” Jefferson continues, “what’s really keeping us from closing the last thirty percent of funding,” he says, “is the lack of experience at the helm.”

  I am struggling to follow. I am nodding madly. I wonder to myself, am I doing badly or well? This meeting is going on, but my body seems to have slipped somehow out of my control. Where is the damned waiter? “Coffee?” I ask even more mouselike of another passing person, unsure of her status, but she walks quietly by.

  “So we could increase your advance on the screenplay and talk about your share of the gross, if you’ll step away from the reins and set up a meeting between us and your boss.”

  Still I nod and nod and bend my head to the table to slurp, without lifting the glass, from the arctically cold, too-iced water. The word echoes slowly in my thumping head. Slowly I hear what Jefferson Bundy has been telling me.

  He says, “We’d do it ourselves but he doesn’t return our phone calls. People tell us he won’t shoot outside of Kolkata. But with you on board …”

  “My boss?” I raise up my head.

  “Just have him meet us for coffee. Just a drink.”

  My mind is slowly forming a focus, the words squeeze out in painful pairs. “For coffee? For drink?”

  “I’m in town until Tuesday, so …”

  “Mr. Jefferson Bundy?” I ask, a complete sentence finally congealing on my tongue. “Please tell me, is meeting Mr. Sen the reason you have traveled here to New York?”

  “Well, it certainly makes things easier, when everyone’s in the same city, and—”

  “Mr. Jefferson Bundy. Mr. Jefferson Bundy.” I realize I am rising from my seat, my legs holding. My headache is now something more like a rage which I can only dispel in shouting. “Mr. Jefferson Bundy, did I not already make it explicit and clear? Did you not express interest and confidence that I could serve in full capacity as—”

  “Sure, Bibhuti, but considering the realities of financing the thing … And on your next project, with one writing credit already under your belt, we could certainly talk about—”

  “Out of the question!” I realize with shame that tears are stinging my eyes, my voice rising to squeaky and unsteady peaks. “Out of the question, Jefferson Bundy! I will not set up a meeting with him. I will not enable you to have coffee with him, or any other sort of drink with him. I will not permit you to show my screenplay to him, and ask him to direct my screenplay, Mr. Jefferson Bundy. Mr. Jefferson Bundy!”

  “Sit down. Please.”

  I see the whole of the restaurant looking at me. I feel sick and confused. The white drapes and snow-and-ice complexions of the black-shirted staff now make me queasy. I must get out of here, this meeting, what happened? I am walking out of the restaurant and into the lobby. Mr. Jefferson Bundy seems to have motioned to someone; some men in black suits are moving toward me.

  “Sir. Slow down.”

  “Hold on, please,” Jefferson Bundy is calling from behind.

  The large men are blocking the doorway, my dream has dissolved, my life is vanishing, oh Nirmala, and I am pushing with my hands between their muttony shoulders.

  “Listen, Bibhuti.” Jefferson is pulling the back of my suit jacket. “Listen, turn around. Jesus H. One second.”

  In despair, I oblige him. Towering over him, I ask, “Yes, Mr. Jeff, Jefferson Bundy. In one second—what are you going to tell me in one second that you haven’t told me already?”

  “You can direct it.”

  I breathe for a moment.

  “Okay? Okay? It’s yours.”

  Dumbly, I stare down at him.

  “Truly. See, I was brainstorming. I was just thinking out loud. Now I see how much it means to you. I see how driven you are, Jesus H. And that’s the main thing I look for in a director. And that’s all I was waiting to see.”

  “It is?”

  “Absolutely. Okay? Relaxed?” He smoothes his shirt, trying to eke from me a smile. “Here’s a Kleenex. Jesus H, you had me running. Let’s go back to our table now.” He tilts his chin toward the restaurant, raising his eyebrow invitingly. “Let’s get you some coffee.”

  8

  After I return to my own hotel, I see Nirmala in the lobby gift shop. I walk up behind her. “Dear Nirmala,” I whisper. She is browsing men’s wristwatches.

  She turns to me with eager but contained surprise.

  “You’re back very quickly.”

  “It has all gone very well.”

  “Very well?” Her look—does it betray some disbelief?

  “Yes, Nirmala!”

  Slowly, her expression changes; she is on the verge of either laughter or weeping. She turns down, coolly caressing a silvery Cartier. Wary of spying eyes, she is trying to act like I am telling her nothing special. Now she motions to the sales assistant. “What is the cost, madam?” she asks her.

  “You can tell him now. The deal is done.” I wipe my cheeks, because some premature drops of joy have fallen already from my eyes.

  “Ah, Bibhuti,” Nirmala responds, finally turning partway in my direction. “Is it really so easy?”

  “Just so. Now no one can keep us from enjoying, at long last, whatever time we have left.”

  Nirmala bends away again, still fondling the watch, her eyes glistening like Ingrid Bergman’s, staring from the window with soulful passion (medium shot) as Cary Grant stands behind her, in Notorious.

  “Why do things so abruptly?” she whispers. “Let me go back to India and tie things up. That way, the transition may be a bit smoother, don’t you think?”

  Of course she is cautious. But she is also hopeful; I trust her appraisal of the situation. “As you say, darling. If you think so.”

  “Sweet Bibhuti,” she sighs. My camera-ey
e zooms to her hands. She slinks the silver watch from one palm into another, tilting it here and there to catch the light. Three-quarters shot: She blinks her eyes clear. “So beautiful, nah?”

  “By the way, sweetheart, I don’t wear wristwatches. They irritate me.”

  She shakes her head, then unsnaps her wallet.

  “You and I will be so happy!” I murmur.

  “Shhh,” she admonishes, because now the saleslady is right here. Nirmala signs the credit card receipt as the saleslady boxes up the watch. Camera goes high and wide (crane shot) as Nirmala walks with me out of the store, with the five-thousand-dollar timepiece weighing down her bag.

  9

  Sometimes life feels very long. What all I have come through! And other times, it seems as if it has all gone by too fast, and still I haven’t learned, and still I haven’t done anything. I feel strangely new to the world. When has one been alive long enough to draw some conclusions, to say anything intelligent about it?

  In other words, what can I say about a culture that is not fully my own?

  Every day, I am struggling to give the answer. Shooting is one horrendous ordeal. Being a director is not nearly as I had imagined, even having seen one hundred thousand film sets by this point in my life. Mr. Jefferson Bundy is far too intrusive, watching the dailies in the evening, then coming to the set groaning my name and shaking his head.

  There are ninety-five headaches by 8:30 each morning, and another four hundred decisions to be made by teatime. (On my set, always we have ten minutes teatime.) The New York crew sometimes treats me like a bumpkin, as if they could make the film more quickly without me. In the night, I can hardly sleep for the pain in my neck and back and hips; I open my eyes every ten minutes with some newly remembered worry, another item to be scribbled urgently in my notebook.

  But I am directing; I am plowing my own earth and seeing what springs up. The strange part is the loneliness of it. Every thirty minutes, the crew will dumbly stare at me, waiting for a decisive command—which they will then promptly dispute with a hundred contradictory opinions. Or they will simply hide on the edges, smoking and gossiping like hourly workers, like this is not someone’s life’s work. When I told Jogesh the news at the closing gala of the festival, the bastard was an absolute gentleman. “Congratulations, Bibhuti. I always hoped you would direct a film one day.” He put his hand on my shoulder. “For a director, every day is a discovery. I wish you great success.” He was so unperturbed that I wondered if someone had told him or he had all along suspected; if he was inwardly laughing at some cool comeuppance that was in store for me.